


15x18 Coda and Wishful thinking...

by Crossroads_Castiel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel Makes a Deal with The Shadow (Supernatural), Dead Castiel (Supernatural), Implied Relationships, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:33:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27455038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crossroads_Castiel/pseuds/Crossroads_Castiel
Summary: 15 x 18 coda.SPOILERS!!
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	15x18 Coda and Wishful thinking...

Dean sat where Cas had left him, back up against the brick wall of the dungeon. Hours may have passed but that seemed irrelevant. His mind was in a fog of shock, still trying to process what had just happened here. He felt his phone vibrate against the concrete floor several times but it was like a gnat in the back of his mind. He couldn’t focus. His body felt cold but he couldn’t be bothered to stand. His legs seemed impossibly heavy in this moment. He died enough times to know he must be dying. It was the only explanation for it. Good. When Sam came crashing into the room, following the sound of Dean’s phone buzzing on the floor, dragging his own eyes up from the floor to meet his felt like a Herculean task. Sam was talking now…but his words weren’t registering. He blinked dumbly at him before Sam froze, seeing the bloody hand print on his shoulder. 

“Are you hurt?” Sam’s concern finally cracked through Dean’s mind. The protections his mind had put up to keep him sane were beginning to lower…slowly. Dean looked confused as Sam and Jack both gestured to his arm. Dean turned his head to look and taking in the hand print, promptly keeled over and vomited onto the floor. Sam’s eyes widened and he rushed over, gripping him under the arms to help him stand. Dean tried to help, no use in being dead-weight…

“I’ve got you,” Sam murmured quietly but at those words Dean felt a tear slide down his cheek. Cas had said the same only minutes, hours, days before. He had no sense of time now. “Dean?!” Sam said with increasing alarm as he felt more than saw Dean respond to his innocent sentence of comfort. “What’s wrong? Where’s Cas? What happened with Billie?” Jack saw Sam struggling and he took Dean’s other side, trying to steer him out of the room, but Dean’s inability to cooperate had them gently setting him in the lone chair within the Devil’s Trap. He sunk in on himself like his strings had been cut, holding his head in his hands. 

“Dean, is Cas…gone? Did Chuck take him too?” Jack’s voice was so childlike, knowing the monster under the bed was real. That fear drug Dean out of his himself long enough to lift his head, shaking it softly as he swallowed. 

“No. The Empty…it…Billie and Cas were taken by the Empty,” Dean said with a shudder that ran down the length of his body. He looked back where the black maw of the Empty had opened. He had a terrible urge to run his hands along the space, press his cheek against the brick, dig his nails into the stone until blood oozed out underneath them…but he had Sam and Jack speaking to him again and he hadn’t heard a word. 

“Dean!” Sam barked a command now, frowning in confusion. “Are we in danger? I thought the Empty…”

“Can’t come unless summoned…” Dean said dryly with a bitter smile pulling at the corners of his lips. 

“Then how…” Sam began but Jack’s mouth opened in a soft O and his eyes locked with Deans soundlessly. Dean stared back, recognizing the knowledge on Jack’s face. 

“You knew,” Dean growled out, finding comfort in the anger he felt scratching at the shields his mind had erected. Anger he could understand. Anger he could let himself feel. Anger made warmth run to the cold tips of his fingers of toes. He wanted to scream, to shout, to take Jack by the shoulders and shake him…but while the anger scratched at him, another emotion fought to soothe it. Feather soft at first, Cas’ words, painful to recall but important to remember, gently attempted to stifle the growing anger. He was more than his anger. He was…love. Love. He could be the person Cas saw in him.

“I knew about the Deal,” Jack said softly as Sam turned to him in confusion. Jack spoke to them both now, cautious as he saw the flames of anger warring in Dean’s eyes. “When I went to Heaven and you did your spell. The Empty attacked Heaven to retriever me, making the claim that as I was half Angel, I belonged there. Cas…he bargained for my life. His for mine, but the Empty wanted to make him suffer, I think. He offered to go with it right then, but they put terms on it…Cas saved me, and he saved Heaven. Naomi even told him where Michael was because of what he did…”

“So Cas and Billie are both really…” Sam began softly, his voice one of someone trying to diffuse a bomb. 

“Gone,” Dean growled out as he again buried his head in his hands, no longer able to raise his anger and lash out. He curled in on himself instead, trying to cling to the warmth it had brought him because he felt so cold. 

“We think…” Sam said softly, not sure how to present the information to his breaking brother. “We think everyone is gone. Except us. Chuck took everyone. What do we do now?”

Dean looked up at him with eyes that saw past him, not at him. Sam swallowed hard as Dean said the words he never thought he’d hear. “We lose, Sam. We fucking lose.”  
\-----------------------------  
Dean sat numbly on his bed, fully dressed, boots and all, his hand clutching the dried hand print on his arm like a talisman against the pain. He didn’t remember how he got here but he assumed Sam and Jack were involved. Suddenly he blinked and he saw Jack, seeming so small, sitting cross legged near Dean’s door. How long had he been there?

“Hey kid…” Dean growled out, his voice raspy as if he hadn’t spoken in some time. 

“I’m sorry,” Jack said softly as he went to stand. “I promised him I’d watch over you if he ever…” Dean’s eyes locked with Jack’s now and he searched his eyes for pity or blame. He found none. 

“What did he say to you?” Dean said shakily, feeling his body dethawing from the head down, but it was painful, letting himself feel again. 

“He didn’t have to say it, Dean. I saw who he was before I was ever born. I chose him as my father because of his capacity for good. For his compassion and his loyalty. He loved you very much.”

Dean scrubbed his eyes and threw his legs off the bed, his hands gripping the comforter tightly, trying to keep his grip on something, anything. Realty was tilted and he couldn’t seem to find solid ground. “Where’s Sam?” Dean growled out as he tried to swallow back the despair at Jack’s words. 

“He’s researching. Trying to find a way to beat Chuck. To get everyone back,” Jack said softly, even though he had no conviction in his tone. 

“It’s hopeless,” Dean added after a moment and Jack nodded softly in agreement. “Let’s get to work then.” Jack’s head shot up in confusion and Dean forced a stubborn smile to form on lips he still couldn’t feel. “Let’s make that fucker pay for all of it.”  
\--------------------------  
Cas had stared at Dean’s face one last time before the Empty came, wanting that clear picture in his mind to last him the rest of…well, forever. What he hadn’t expected was…any of this. When he’d made it to the Empty, they had kept the form of Meg and they looked remarkably shaken. 

“Make it stop!” They’d shrieked at him as soon as his feet felt they were on solid ground. “He made it loud!”

Cas took a step back from them automatically, but they pursued him. He looked around for Billie, but she was nowhere to be found. “She sent him here to hurt me and now there’s so much noise. What did Jack do!?” They screamed now and Cas threw his hands over his ears. The sound was deafening, and his face pinched up painfully as the reverberations made it through.  
“I don’t know!” Cas yelled back over their scream. 

“Liar! They’re all awake, just like you. All of them!” They yelled again and only then did Cas slowly lower his hands and turn, tilting his head as he squinted his eyes in the darkness. He could slowly make out forms in the nothingness. So many forms. Angelic. Demonic. Some familiar. 

“Castiel…Tell us what has happened. What is this place?” came a familiar voice that made Cas flinch reflexively. 

“Raphael, big brother. Let’s give the kid a minute to process. I doubt he got the invite to the family reunion either. What’s up little bro?” Gabriel said with a raised eyebrow as he, along with hundreds upon thousands of other figures, began to surround him. 

Raphael, Gabriel, Balthazar, Anna, Ishim, Bartholomew, Benjamin, Duma, Hannah…They were all here and all awake…

“We demand answers,” roared the voices of the demons on the other side of the circle. Cas and the Empty stood in the center. 

Cas swallowed hard at the sea of faces surrounding him. “This place is where all Angels and Demons go when they die. You are awake because…” Castiel hesitated but he had truly nothing left to lose. “It’s Ch…God. He betrayed us. Everything. All of it was for his own entertainment. There was no mission. No greater good. Every death was to further his plot line and his amusement. He no longer cares about the humans, about Earth, about any of us…If he ever did.”

“How can you say that?” came a strangled cry from a faceless Angel.

“He’s not lying,” came a growl from the Empty, offering begrudging agreaance. “God is not on anyone’s side but his own. Not anymore. I may not be able to go to Earth…but I can tell you he’s wiped the slate clean except for the Winchesters. It’s just a cat and mouse game now.”

A spark of hope flared up inside him and Cas turned abruptly to the Empty, far closer in proximity that he would like. “I can help you make it quiet here again. I will find a way to help you sleep, but you have to let me help them.”

The Empty stepped back and barked a disbelieving laugh. “Are you kidding me?! I just got you here. A deal’s a deal.”

Castiel shook his head as he spoke. “I didn’t ask you to send me back…Send them. Let them help them defeat God and I will stay.”

“Just you for all of them? You really that’s a fair deal?” the Empty said as they rolled their eyes. 

“They didn’t wake you up. I did,” Cas tried to hide the trembling in his hands. If he could do this, he could save Dean. Really save him. He could help him destroy the hamster wheel and give him what he believed he truly needed most. His freedom. The Empty studied him a moment, wincing at the murmuring voices around them. The noise seemed to truly cause them pain. 

“Deal,” they said with gritted teeth as they crossed their arms over their chest. 

The triumph Cas felt in his chest was only slightly overshadowed by knowing he had truly sealed his own fate once again. One last act of sacrifice for the ones he loved.


End file.
